Pirate Mysteries in Review – Argh, a pirate I will find!

I remember back in the good old days when home computers were still a long way away from being the preferred past time of younglings, we entertained ourselves with various “hardware” games. And among these were the popular “Where’s Waldo” style exercises, printed in just about any kid’s magazine you could think of. If you’re by any chance not familiar with those, the goal was simple – Find Waldo (a skinny guy in a funny striped shirt and hat) on a picture. Just 20 years and some clever devs have taken the concept to a whole new level with the range of Hidden Object games, recently joined by Pirate Mysteries.

Pirate Mysteries is a classic Hidden Object (HdO) title, presenting the basic genre gameplay in virtually any twist imaginable and spicing it up with a few minigames to keep you on your toes. The story revolves around a beautiful young girl and her bungling father – a pirate wannabe who managed to get himself possessed by an ancient demon. All in day’s work…

Pirate Mysteries has about every type of the Hidden Object gameplay for you to enjoy. From the most basic task of finding objects by name and silhouette, to solving riddles in order to find out what to tap on, to turning the game inside out and placing objects in the appropriate empty spaces. Sometimes you’ll even have to tap around in the dark with just a limited light source. Usually you’ll have about 3-5 locations available at the same time and if you’re completely stuck you can rest from the current scene and go elsewhere to try your luck.

Between all that eye-strain from the careful examination of the surroundings, you’ll have some mini-games to change up the pace and keep you from nodding off. These range from the good old arranging scraps of paper to form a map to more complex puzzles. Though none are really difficult to master, they offer a nice distraction from the tediousness of hunting for stuff 100% of the time.

The graphics are quite nice, with rich environment and memorable characters. At full zoom-out they look great on the Retina display. Once you zoom in, however, the quality doesn’t hold up and you‘ll find yourself faced with a blurry and pixelated picture. The interface looks like about any other HdO titles on the platform, taking up a significant part of the iPhone’s screen.

In the end, Pirate Mysteries left me with mixed feelings. On one hand it has a nice storyline with memorable characters and humorous dialogues, varied forms of HdO gameplay and minigames to allow your mind to rest from the repetitive process of looking for objects. On the other, the interface is unimaginative, covering up a significant part of the iPhone’s screen and the graphics quality falls apart once you zoom in on the picture. That said, if you’re a fan of the Hidden Object genre, it’s definitely worth a look.